WaPo Editor Champions Right to Abort Down Syndrome Babies

‘Please don’t try to kill us all off,’ says Down syndrome activist

Women deserve the right to abort babies who are found to have down syndrome, a Washington Post editor argued.

In a piece published Friday, deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus says she respects and admires families who raise down syndrome children, but feels women should be able to kill their babies if testing shows the genetic disorder.

Discussing her two previous pregnancies, Marcus says, “I can say without hesitation that, tragic as it would have felt and ghastly as a second-trimester abortion would have been, I would have terminated those pregnancies had the testing come back positive,” adding, “I would have grieved the loss and moved on.”

“I’m going to be blunt here: That was not the child I wanted,” Marcus writes.

While noting, “The new Gerber baby with Down syndrome is awfully cute,” Marcus says states like North Dakota, Ohio, and Louisiana, which have passed laws banning the termination of pregnancies solely based on a child having down syndrome, are examples of “the state hijacking your body.”

“These laws are flatly inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, reaffirmed in 1992, that ‘it is a constitutional liberty of the woman to have some freedom to terminate her pregnancy,’” Marcus wrote.

“We just have an extra chromosome,” she said. “We are still human beings. We are not monsters. Don’t be afraid of us… Please don’t try to kill us all off.”

Fien over the weekend spoke to “100,000 screaming pro-lifers” at the the Save the 8th Rally in Ireland, which she calls “one of the only countries in the world where babies with Down’s syndrome are safe inside their mother’s wombs.”

Interestingly Marcus admits basing life-or-death decisions off prenatal testing technology has “creepy, eugenic aspects,” but she still insists women have a constitutional right to kill babies and the government has no right to protect life.